It's no surprise there. In my ex alma mater school, there were a lot of unexplained deaths back then as i heard from ex CB directly.. Spanish flu deaths 11 died and buried in the backyard and mummified.. now a CB cemetery. Few unexplained deaths in 40's/50's and then two deaths in the 70's.

That hulking giant ex CB spent more & more time in chapel expressing his very serious remorse than norm as it was unusual sight to see his large frame. I didn't understand what was going on at first then we realised that later any beatings back then caused such a death of any deaf boy.

An very elderly old man well over in his 80's before he died few years ago told me it was that hulking giant who did the damage. Then it dawned on me re his serious repentance and spending most of his time in prayer inside the chapel much to the displeasure of a Vincentian priest back then. That was our reasoning of that situation at that time.

RTE's report on this on the news was pathetic, they treated it like an archaeological find and mentioned how the good nuns will make a donation towards a memorial.

A crime scene, in fact.

Galway County Council in the frame, not just the nuns.

Not much is said about the County Councils, but they had a role in sending people to these places. One instance that stuck in my mind was the married woman, signed into a Magdalene Laundry in perpetuity by the Secretary of Carlow County Council in the 1950s, for having got pregnant by a man not her husband. The baby was sent to a separate institution.

“ We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act. ”— Jean-Paul Sartre

The children died at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years. The figures are still confused. Another report seems to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would change the statistic to almost two deaths a week in a relatively small institution.Mortality at that rate countered trends in Ireland of the 1940′s which saw infant mortality drop from the regions of 80 per 1,000 live births to almost 40 per 1,000.Newspaper reports from the period are few but they give some insight. From the outset the ‘Home’ is subject to economic review. Clippings from the Connacht Tribune (see below) show that ‘inmates’, as the infants were called, had an upkeep of 10 shillings per week which was judged excessive especially when they were fed by nursing mothers.

Infanticide by neglect.

“ We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act. ”— Jean-Paul Sartre

Garda would have known about this for a long time as they would have to give their authorisation for that in conjunction with the local council. That's how it was done in these days as Council/Garda deferred it to the religious authorities. They swallowed up religious authority's stories. Hence the cover up's when the church was so high and mighty in their power and pomp.

Are we so inured to horror now that this story is not front page everywhere? Perhaps we are so jaded by the vileness that we can't react vigorously any more. If this were a mass grave in Kosovo, Rwanda or Auschwitz it would be an international story.

They will argue, no doubt, that the babies came to them in a malnourished state. If they had come to a hospital, they would have been given emergency treatment and posssibly saved. And please don't tell me that they weren't paid enough to save these babies. 800 over40 years? So grim, so brutal.

Are we so inured to horror now that this story is not front page everywhere? Perhaps we are so jaded by the vileness that we can't react vigorously any more. If this were a mass grave in Kosovo, Rwanda or Auschwitz it would be an international story.

They will argue, no doubt, that the babies came to them in a malnourished state. If they had come to a hospital, they would have been given emergency treatment and posssibly saved. And please don't tell me that they weren't paid enough to save these babies. 800 over40 years? So grim, so brutal.

There was one front page story (Mail?) but otherwise made hardly any impact on press or news bulletins.

The Irish Central site interviewed Catherine Corless, the local historian, who did the heavy lifting on this, tracking down an going through the hundreds of death records.

Capitation grants were paid by local authorities, yet the women were forced to work long arduous hours, sometimes carrying out humiliating, not to mention unnecessary tasks, such as being forced to pluck grass on their hands and knees (see The Light in the Window by June Goulding).

If the local authorities were paying monies into these places surely there was an inspection regime and if so where are these reports?

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins

Stephanie Lord leaves out the class aspect of things. "Holidays" and adoptions were arranged for the offspring of those who were comfortable or from "good families", banishment to Magdalen laundries was rarer when the family were not poor. This aspect of things needs to be factored in, because it helps explain how the church managed to get away with such barbarity over the years despite many people knowing about it. People knew the score.

Sadly there are many mass graves (in the thousands) like this around the country where untold numbers of babies were buried in unconsecrated ground. They are often called "Cillín".

If you go onto this map and select "Chidren's Burial Ground" you will find the location of many, but not all, of these mass graves. You must search by county as there are too many (over 1000) results to show if you search the entire country.

This is, of course, leaving out the mass graves which are not marked on maps. Locals will be able to show you were they are, especially in rural areas.

Interestingly it is not (and has never been) against catholic teaching to bury unbaptized children in consecrated ground, this was a practice which local Bishops or priests implemented. It must have been because of the attitude which Lord describes.

As an aside I also think her criticism of the annoyance the alleged cousin of Robert Corbet's ex girlfriend showed at the suggestion that her cousin and Corbet were having/had/planning a "dirty weekend" is very unfair and not at all necessary. It seems very out of place. To imply that she has the same or similar mentality which led to 800 babies in a septic tank is ridiculous.